Good morning, gentle reader (although not all of you seem to be particularly gentle at the moment…)!

Yes, Monday comes around again, as inevitable as a tax return – by the way, the deadline for online submission is just ten weeks away – and thus it is my turn to keep the site turning.

Whilst much Liberal Democrat attention is focussed upon North Shropshire, we’re in the last ten days of the campaign in Old Bexley and Sidcup, where Simone Reynolds is flying our flag. She improved our vote share from 3.3% to 8.3% in 2019, and it would be nice if she could keep the third place she gained then.

Meanwhile, the Government continue to find new and creative ways of screwing up. Perhaps the tension between Blue Wall and Red Wall is beginning to tear the Conservatives apart, although they have always found a way of defusing such tensions in order to stay in power. Power is not necessarily control though, as Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is beginning to discover.

Threats to the triple lock anger pensioners, increases in National Insurance rates anger workers, undeliverable promises on migration upset everybody, either for their cruelty or the fact that they don’t work and are probably illegal anyway. And axing transport improvements for the North of England alienate voters and Red Wall Conservative MPs.

I don’t doubt that some of the Conservative leadership are intelligent but their apparent contempt for experts and good governance is beginning to show. You may retain some popularity by blaming somebody else, indeed anybody else, for your failings but eventually you run out of excuses. We can but hope…

Angela Merkel became German Chancellor on this day in 2005, and she’s still there, doing the job in her usual unfussy manner. What must it be like to have a leader with such widespread respect? And, of course, today is the fifty-eighth anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, still the subject of conspiracy theories promoted by people with too much time on their hands. Finally, and more personally relevant, on this day in 1497, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope bound for India.

It is, and I apologise for not bringing news of this to you sooner, Manatee Awareness Month, so we’ll be bringing you the latest news on emerging Liberal Democrat policy on this subject.

And with that, it’s time to get on, and so…

* Mark Valladares is the Monday Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He finds the sight of manatee eating lettuce strangely relaxing.